02/29/2020 - 13:16
- Clarín.com
- World
The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) insisted on Friday that fraud was committed in the Bolivian elections last October, which led to the removal and departure of the country of the then-president Evo Morales.
The results of the votes "unequivocally demonstrate that there was 'intentional manipulation' of the elections," said Gonzalo Koncke, chief of staff of the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, in a letter in response to an investigation published Thursday in a forum from The Washington Post.
According to this work, a statistical analysis prepared by John Curiel and Jack Williams, two researchers from the Laboratory of Sciences and Electoral Data of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Morales won the elections with "high probability" without committing fraud.
The "electoral manipulation", according to the OAS, took place through "changes in the minutes and the falsification of the signatures of juries of tables" that were detected by the mission of observation of the organism, as well as by the redirection of the flow of data in the processing of the results to "two hidden and uncontrolled servers" by the staff of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).
This, he insisted, "enabled data manipulation and impersonation of minutes."
The article published by the Post, " contains multiple falsehoods, inaccuracies and omissions . The piece deliberately distorts the final report of the election audit in Bolivia, published by the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) on December 4 of 2019, "insists the letter.
"The hidden servers, the lack of chain of custody, the falsification of minutes or inexplicable inconsistencies in the number of votes cast, just to name some of the findings, should not be ignored by any specialist in electoral integrity," he added.
The agency, which recalled that the observation mission of the European Union supported its position and "presented evidence of other irregularities," described the work as "defective", "not honest" and "not scientific."
The MIT investigators studied the trend of scrutiny before and after the 84% rapid count was interrupted, at which point opponents of Morales denounced the start of the alleged fraud.
"It is a challenge to the reason that someone takes one of these tests, supposedly questions it, ignores all the others and declares with pride that 'there is no reason to suspect fraud,'" Almagro's chief of staff said in his letter, in which recalled the long experience and prestige of the OAS observation missions.
"The OAS continues to support its work and will continue to alert each and every effort, like this one, to manipulate public opinion," he insisted.
In their analysis, the MIT researchers said that it is "highly probable that Morales exceeded the margin of 10 percentage points" necessary to be elected in a first round, defending that the upward trend that was driving the then president was prior to the interruption of the quick count.
Morales's resignation has been described as a "coup d'etat" by several governments, such as that of Mexico, while other countries, such as the United States, have recognized the new Bolivian government.
Evo Morales lives in exile in Argentina and intended to appear to the Senate in the new elections scheduled for May, but his candidacy was disabled by the members of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).
In Bolivia, the head of state only appoints one of the members that make up the TSE, since the other six are elected in Parliament, where the Movement to Socialism (MAS), the party of Evo Morales, currently has a majority.
Source: EFE